Dr. Alexander Bolonkin is a well-known
scientist in the field of aeronautics, computer technology and mathematics.
Currently he is working on the book "Twenty-First Century: Human
Immortality and the Advent of Post-Human Civilization." These are
some excerpts from the book.

Immortality is
the most cherished dream and the biggest wish of any person. People
seldom think about it while they are still young, healthy , and full of
energy. But when they get some incurable disease or become old, then
there is no bigger wish for them than to live longer, put off the inevitable
end. And no matter what heavenly existence in the after-life is promised
to them by religion, the vast majority of people want to stay and enjoy
life here, on Earth, as long as possible.

Medical Science and the Issue of Immortality

A great many
of doctors and scientists are currently working on the problems of health
and longevity. Substantial means are spent on it, about 15-25% of
all human labor and resources. There are certain achievements in this direction:
we have created wonderful medications (e.g. antibiotics); conquered many
diseases; learnt to transplant human organs; created an artificial heart,
kidneys, lungs, limbs; learnt to apply physiological solutions directly
into the blood stream, and to saturate blood with oxygen. We have
gotten inside the most sacred organ - the human brain, even inside its
cells. We can record their signals, we can agitate some parts of
the brain by electric stimuli inducing a patient to experience certain
sensations, images, and hallucinations.
We can attribute
the fact that the average life span has increased two times in the last
two hundred years to the achievements of modern medicine.
But can medical
science solve the problem of immortality? Evidently, it cannot.
It cannot do that in principle. This is a dead-end direction in science.
Maximum it can achieve is increase the average life expectancy another
5-10 years. An average person will be expected to live 80 years instead
of 70. But what kind of person will it be? A very old one, capable
of only existing and consuming, whose medical and personal care will demand
huge funds.
The proportion
of the elderly and retirees has increased steeply in the last 20-30 years
and continues to grow depleting the pension funds and pressuring the younger
generation to support them. So it is hard to say whether the modern
success of medicine is a blessing or a curse from the point of view of
the entire humankind, even though it is definitely a blessing from the
point of view of a separate individual.
Humanity as
a whole, as a civilization, needs active, able to work and creative members,
generating material wealth and moving forward technology and science, not
the elderly retirees with their numerous ailments and a huge army of those
tending to them. It dreams not of the immortality of an old
person, but of the immortality of youthfulness, activity, creativity,
enjoying life.
Now there
are signs of a breakthrough, but not in the direction the humankind has
been working on all along, since the times of the first sorcerers to modern-day
highly-educated doctors. Striving to prolong his biological existence,
man has been chiseling, so to speak, at the endless stone wall.
All he has been able to accomplish is only a dent in that wall - increased
life expectancy, conquering some diseases, relieving suffering. As
a payoff, the humanity has received a huge army of pensioners and retirees
and gigantic expenditure on their upkeep.
Of course, one
can continue chiseling at the dent in the wall further on, make it somewhat
bigger, aggravating side effects. But we are already approaching
the biological limit, when the cause of death and feeblemindedness is not
a certain disease which can be conquered, but general deterioration of
the entire organism, its decay on the cellular level, when the cells stop
to divide. A live cell is a very complex biological formation.
In its nucleus it has DNA - biological molecules consisting of tens of
thousands of atoms connected between themselves with very fragile molecular
links. Suffice it to say, that temperature fluctuation of only a
few degrees can ruin these links. That is why a human organism maintains
a certain temperature - 36.7 C. Raising this temperature only 2-3
degrees causes pain, and 5-7 degrees leads to death. Maintaining
the existence of human cells also presents a big problem for humanity involving
food, shelter, clothes and ecologically clean environment.
Nevertheless,
human cells cannot exist eternally even under ideal conditions. This
follows from the atomic-molecular theory. Atoms of biological molecules
permanently oscillate and interact with each other. According to
the theory of probability, sooner or later the impulses of adjacent atoms
influencing the given atom, add up, and the atom acquires enough speed
to break loose from its atomic chain, or at least to transfer into the
adjacent position (physicists say that the impulse received by the atom
has surpassed the energy threshold which retains the atom in in its particular
place in the molecular chain). It also means that the cell containing
this atom has been damaged and cannot any longer function normally.
Thus, for example, we get cancer cells which cannot fulfill their designated
functions any more and begin to proliferate abnormally fast and ruin human
organs.
This process
accelerates manifold when a person has been exposed to a strong electromagnetic
radiation, for instance, Roentgen or Y-rays, a high-frequency electric
current or radioactive materials.
Actually, the
process of deforming of the hereditary DNA molecule under the influence
of weak cosmic rays can take place from time to time, leading sometimes
to birth defects, or it may turn out to be useful for the survival properties.
And this plays a positive role for a particular species of plants or animals
contributing to their adaptability to the changed environment and their
survival as a species. But for a particular individual such aberration
is a tragedy as a rule, since the overwhelming majority of such cases are
birth defects, with only few cases of useful mutations. And human
society in general is suspicious of people who are radically different
in their looks or abilities.

An Unexpected Breakthrough

An unusually
fast development of computer technology, especially the microchips which
allow hundreds of thousands of electronic elements on one square centimeter,
has opened before the humanity a radically different method of solving
the problem of immortality of a separate individual. This method
is based not on trying to preserve the fragile biological molecules, but
on the transition to the artificial semiconductive (silicone, helium, etc.)
chips which are resistant to considerable temperature fluctuations and
do not need food or oxygen and can be preserved for thousands of years.
And, most important, the information contained in them can easily be re-recorded
into another chip and be stored in several duplicates.
And if our brain
consisted of such chips, and not the biological molecules, then it would
mean that we have achieved immortality. Then our biological body
would become a heavy burden. It suffers from cold and hot temperatures,
needs clothes and care, can be easily damaged. Itís much more convenient
to have metal arms and legs, tremendously strong, and which are insensitive
to heat and cold and do not need food or oxygen. And even if they
break, itís no big deal - we can buy new ones, more improved.
It may seem
that this immortal man does not have anything human (in our understanding)
left in him. But he does, he has the most important thing left -
his consciousness, his memory, concepts and habits, i.e. everything encoded
in his brain. Outwardly, he can look quite human, and even more graceful:
a beautiful young face, a slim figure, soft smooth skin, etc. Moreover,
one can change the look at will, according to current fashion, personal
taste and the individual understanding of beauty. We are spending
huge amounts of money on medicine. If we had been spending at least
one-tenth of this money on the development of electronics, we would get
immortality in the near future.
According to
the authorís research, such transition to immortality (E-creatures) will
be possible in 10-20 years. At first it will cost several million
dollars and will be affordable only to very wealthy people, important statesmen,
and celebrities. But in another 10-20 years, i.e. in the years 2020
- 2035, the cost of HEC (human-equivalent chip), together with the E-body,
and organs of reception and communication, will drop to a few thousand
dollars, and immortality will become affordable to the majority of the
population of the developed countries, and another 10-15 years later, it
will be accessible to practically all inhabitants of the Earth. Especially
when at first it will be possible to record on chips only the contents
of the brain, and provide the body for its independent existence later.
On October 11,
1995, Literaturnaya Gazeta (The Literary Gazette, a popular Russian weekly)
published my article "If Not We, Then Our Children Will Be The Last Generation
Of Human Beings" devoted to electronic civilization. The editor Oleg
Moroz reciprocated with the article "Isnít It High Time To Smash Computers
With a Hammer?" (November 22, 1995) in which he discussed the ethical side
of annihilating rational electronic creatures to preserve humanity.
But if the cost
of the HEC drops and the procedure of reincarnation into the E-creature
before death (transition to immortality) for the majority of people becomes
affordable, then the situation deserves a second look. Indeed, the
first to perform such transition will be very old or incurably sick people.
And to pummel computers with a hammer will be equal to killing oneís own
parents and precluding oneís own possibility to become immortal.
Once,
the host of an American television program whose guest I was, asked me,
"Will the electronic creature be entirely identical to its parent, with
his feelings and emotions?" The answer was, "At first - yes!"
But the development of these creatures will be so fast that we cannot really
foresee the consequences. If a biological human being needs dozens
of years to learn science, foreign languages, etc., an E-creature will
acquire this knowledge in fractions of a second (the time needed to record
it in its memory). And we know how different college-educated people
are from, say, pre-schoolers, in their cognizance. And, since the
first E-creatures will be contemporary middle-aged people who will, at
least initially, preserve their feelings towards their children (contemporary
younger generation), in all probability, there wonít be a mass destruction
of humans by E-creatures. For some time they will co-exist.
Itís quite likely that the birthrate of humans will be curtailed or it
will be dropping due to natural causes, and the living, as they become
old, will be transforming themselves into E-creatures. That is to
say that the number of E-creatures will be growing and the number of people
diminishing, till it gets to the minimum necessary for the zoos and small
reservations. In all likelihood, the feelings that E-creatures may
have towards humans as their ancestors, will be fading away, in proportion
to the growing gap between the mental capacity of humans and electronic
creatures, till they become comparable to our own attitude towards apes
or even bugs.
Another thing
is quite obvious, too - that biological propagation will be so expensive,
time-consuming, and primitive, that it will go into oblivion. Each
E-creature can reproduce itself simply by re-recording the contents of
its brain to a new E-creature, i.e. propagate practically instantaneously,
bypassing the stages of childhood, growing up, education, accumulating
experience, etc. But, of course, this mature "offspring" will be
completely identical to its parent only at the first moment of its existence.
In time, depending on the received information and the area of expertise,
this E-creature will be alienating itself from its ancestor, and, possibly,
even become his enemy at some point, if their interests cross or go in
opposite directions.

Contemporary Research

The cognitive
abilities of man are defined by his brain, to be precise, by ten billion
neurons of his brain. Neurons can be modeled on the computer.
Such experiments have been conducted by Professor Kwin(?) Warwick, head
of the cybernetics department of Reading University in the south of England,
one of the biggest specialists in robot technology in the world.
The results of these experiments were presented at the International Conference
on Robotics. Professor Warwick has created a group of autonomous
self-propelled miniature robots which he called "the seven dwarfs."
A group of scientists
headed by Rodney Brook from the laboratory of artificial intelligence of
MIT, are working on an unusual project which they called "Cog." The
researchers want to model the mental and physical capacity of a six-month
old. Their robot has eyes, ears, hands, fingers, an electronic brain
and a system of information transmission duplicating human nervous system.
By this kind of modeling, the researchers want to gain better understanding
of how human beings coordinate their movements, how they learn to
interact with the environment. The realization of this program will
take ten years and will cost several million dollars.
They have already
built a couple dozen humanoid robots which are moving autonomous machines
with artificial intelligence. They are capable, through the sensors,
to receive information about the environment, generalize, and plan their
actions and behavior. Thus, for example, if a robotís leg bumps against
an obstacle and receives a blow, the robot acquires a reflex to withdraw
it quickly. They have already developed several dozen of such reflexes
in their behavior, which helps them to safeguard and protect themselves.
Brook says that
in the course of human evolution, the human brain has developed thousands
of conventional solutions to everyday problems such as optical and audio
discerning and movement. All this needs to be studied. One
cannot instantly transform a bug into a man. That is why our
program will take ten years. I will consider my work completed when
I create the smartest cat in the world.
It should
be noted that the most powerful supercomputer can only model 40-60 million
neurons, i.e. it is 200-300 times weaker than a human brain. But
this gap will be overcome in the near 3-5 years ( In December 1996 the
"Intel" company created a computer whose power equals one teraflops.
It cost 55 million dollars).
Not long ago
"The Russian Advertisement" newspaper re-printed the article of Igor Tsaryov
first published in the newspaper "Itís Hard to Believe." He writes
that for several years the U.S. Ministry of Defense has been secretly working
on a unique project "The Computer Maugli" (Sid). When a thirty-three
year old Nadine M. gave birth to a boy, the doctors established that he
was doomed. He was on a life support for a few days. During
that time his brain was scanned with special equipment, and the electric
potential of the neurons of this brain was copied into the neuron models
in the computer. Steem(?) Roiler, one of the participants of this
project, said at the computer conference in Las Vegas that they had managed
to scan 60% of the infantís neurons. And this small artificial brain
began to live and develop. First only his mother was informed.
She took it calmly. The father was horrified at first and tried to
destroy this computer creature. But later both parents started treating
him as a real child. The computer was connected to the multi-media
and virtual reality systems. These systems allow not only to have
a three-dimensional full-sized image of Sid, but also to hear his voice,
communicate with him, and "virtually" hold him in hands, so to speak.
But when a special committee decided to open some results of the project,
and "The Scientific Observer" published some data, one of American computer
whiz-kids managed to decipher the secret code and copy some files.
Sid got a defective "twin." Fortunately, the whiz was quickly found, and
the first in human history attempt to steal electronic children and duplicating
copies of electronic creatures, was severed. At the present time,
both parents take care of their "childís" health and demand that the researchers
install up-to-date programs of defense from computer viruses and burglars.
Unfortunately,
and I am sure they have reasons for that, Americans keep secret the important
details and results of the project - for instance, how they copied the
potentials of the neurons, how the first E-creature is developing, what
are the conclusions of the scientists. And probably, they are right,
not willing to let the genie out of the bottle. More so because modern
virtual reality systems are able to create false objects, e.g. model the
image of any dead person or leader. It is possible to show on television
how he is making a speech today, has a press-conference, talks to people,
spends time with his family, etc.
But one cannot
keep any secret for long, especially in science. The very possibility
of a breakthrough stimulates other scientists and other countries to work
in this direction. And sooner or later, the results will be repeated.
Letís remember, for instance, that there havenít been a bigger secret than
the production of an A- or H-bomb. But more and more countries re-invent
them, gain expertise in nuclear technology and start producing their own
nuclear weapons.

Intelligence in Space

Since E-creatures
will be made of super-strong steels and alloys, their brain will be working
on radio-active batteries, and power will be supplied by compact nuclear
reactors, they will not need air, warmth, water, food, clothes, shelter,
good quality environment, etc., which is the main concern of humanity and
consumes 99.9% of its time and energy. This also means that E-creatures
will be able to travel freely in the desert, the Arctic and the Antarctic
regions, sub-atmosphere, mountain summits, the bottom of the ocean.
They will be able to live, work and travel in space, receiving their energy
directly from the sun.
Besides,
as organs of feelings, E-creatures can use the whole arsenal of highly
sensitive apparatuses created by the civilization, i.e. not only the visible
light and sound, but also radiolocation, infra-red, ultra-violet, roentgen
and Y-rays, ultra- and infra-sounds, audiolocation, environment sensors,
etc. All this information can be received instantly through radio,
satellite and cable network.
Moreover, since
E-creatures (just like humans, for that matter) are nothing else but information
recorded in their brains, and re-recording of this information from one
chip to another (unlike human reproduction) does not present any difficulty
and can be realized through radio, cable network, or a laser beam,
they can travel on Earth, as well as in outer space, without their actual
physical movement, simply by re-recording the contents of their brains
into the chips on the Moon, Mars, or Jupiter.
Which is to
say that E-creatures will have the ability to move EXTRA-CORPORALLY with
the speed of light - the maximal possible speed in the material world.
This will be, indeed, like an incorporeal soul which can travel, so to
speak, from one body to another, or, to be more exact, from one chip to
another.
The expansion
of E-creatures (E-civilization), first in the solar system, then in our
galaxy, then in the entire Universe, will be fast.
To achieve this,
it is not necessary to launch huge spacecraft with a large crew, as it
is depicted in science-fiction books. It will be enough to send a
receiver to this or that part of the Universe, which will receive information
and re-produce E-creatures. Then the speed of the expansion of E-civilization
on some planet will depend only on the rate of production of robots and
chips, and the speed of the transmission of information. It is quite
obvious that the reproduction of E-creatures will take place in geometric
progression and will only be limited by the natural resources of the planet.
Thus E-creatures
realize in practice the idea of EXTRA-CORPORAL travel with the speed of
light. Why, indeed, should an E-creature travel hundreds or thousands
of years to a certain planet, when, with the help of a laser beam,
it can transmit with the speed of light, all the information stored in
his brain, to another chip, on another planet.
And if a planet
were to meet with an ultimate catastrophe, like a collision with a huge
meteorite, another planet, or the explosion of the sun, E-civilization
can arrange transporting E-creatures to another planet or another solar
system.
One more thing
is of interest. A light beam can travel to other galaxies for millions
of years, so this, in a manner of speaking, "incorporeal soul" can exist
for millions of years as an electromagnetic field and "resurrect" as an
E-creature through a receiver. This can occur even without a special
receiver, as the high energy electromagnetic oscillations can yield material
particles, and their energy (frequency) increases the closer it gets to
a strong gravitational field, e.g. near a "black hole." And since
it will not be hard for an E-creature to produce a DNA molecule, it means
that it will not be hard for it to bring biological life to any suitable
planet and control and develop it in the necessary direction, for
example, to create a human being.